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Girmityas
Girmitiyas, also known as Jahajis, were indentured laborers from British India transported to work on plantations in Fiji, Mauritius, South Africa, and the Caribbean (mostly Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname) as part of the Indian indenture system. Etymology The word ''girmit'' represented an Indian pronunciation of the English language word "agreement" - from the indenture "agreement" of the British Government with Indian labourers. The agreements specified the workers' length of stay in foreign parts and the conditions attached to their return to the British Raj. The word ''Jahāj'' refers to 'ship' in Indic languages (from the Arabic/Persian ''Jahāz/''جهاز), with ''Jahaji'' implying 'people of ship' or 'people coming via ship'. In Fiji, Governor Arthur Hamilton-Gordon discouraged Melanesian Fijians from working on the plantations in an attempt to preserve their culture. Activist Shaneel Lal argues that Girmitiya were deceitfully enslaved by the British. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fijian Indian Diaspora
Indo-Fijians or Indian-Fijians (also known as Fiji Indians) are Fijian citizens of Indian descent, and include people who trace their ancestry to various regions of the Indian subcontinent.Girmit by Suresh Prasad Although Indo-Fijians constituted a majority of Fiji's population from 1956 through the late 1980s, discrimination and the resulting brain drain resulted in them numbering 313,798 (37.6%) (2007 census) out of a total of 827,900 people living in :Fiji . Although they hailed from various regions in the Indian subcontinent, the vast majority of Indo-Fijians trace their origins to the Awadh and Bhojpur regions of the Hindi Belt in northern India. Indians in Fiji speak Fiji Hindi which is based on the Awadhi dialect with major influence from Bhojpuri. It is distinct to the Modern Standard Hindi spoken in India. The major home districts of Fiji's North Indian labourers were Basti, Gonda, Faizabad, Sultanpur and Azamgarh, in the present-day Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indians In Fiji
Indo-Fijians or Indian-Fijians (also known as Fiji Indians) are Fijian citizens of Indian descent, and include people who trace their ancestry to various regions of the Indian subcontinent.Girmit by Suresh Prasad Although Indo-Fijians constituted a majority of Fiji's population from 1956 through the late 1980s, discrimination and the resulting brain drain resulted in them numbering 313,798 (37.6%) (2007 census) out of a total of 827,900 people living in :Fiji . Although they hailed from various regions in the Indian subcontinent, the vast majority of Indo-Fijians trace their origins to the Awadh and Bhojpur regions of the Hindi Belt in northern India. Indians in Fiji speak Fiji Hindi which is based on the Awadhi dialect with major influence from Bhojpuri. It is distinct to the Modern Standard Hindi spoken in India. The major home districts of Fiji's North Indian labourers were Basti, Gonda, Faizabad, Sultanpur and Azamgarh, in the present-day Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Raj
The British Raj (; from Hindi language, Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was himself employed by the British East India company from the age of seventeen until the British government assumed direct rule over India in 1858." * * and lasted from 1858 to 1947. * * The region under British control was commonly called India in contemporaneous usage and included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom, which were collectively called Presidencies and provinces of British India, British India, and areas ruled by indigenous rulers, but under British British paramountcy, paramountcy, called the princely states. The region was sometimes called the Indian Empire, though not officially. As ''India'', it was a founding member of the League of Nations, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Baron Stanmore
Arthur Charles Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Baron Stanmore (26 November 1829 – 30 January 1912) was a British Liberal Party politician and colonial administrator. He had extensive contact with Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. Career Gordon was born in London in 1829. He was the youngest son of George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen and his second wife, Harriet Douglas. His mother was the widow of Viscount Hamilton. Gordon was educated privately and then at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1849. After graduating in 1851, he worked as Assistant Private Secretary to the British Prime Minister (his father) between 1852 and 1855, and was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Beverley from 1854 to 1857. In 1875, the Fiji Islands were created a separate Colony, and Sir Arthur Gordon was appointed the first Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Fiji, until 1880. In connection with this he also received the appointment of Consul-Gene ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mahendra Chaudhry
Mahendra Pal Chaudhry ( hif, महेन्द्र पाल चौधरी; born 9 February 1942) is a Fijian politician and the leader of the Fiji Labour Party. Following a historic election in which he defeated the long-time former leader, Sitiveni Rabuka, the former trade union leader became Fiji's first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister on 19 May 1999, but exactly one year later, on 19 May 2000 he and most of his Cabinet were taken hostage by coup leader George Speight, in the Fiji coup of 2000. Unable to exercise his duties, he and his ministers were sacked by President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara on 27 May; Mara intended to assume emergency powers himself but was himself deposed by the military leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama. After 56 days in captivity, Chaudhry was released on 13 July and subsequently embarked on a tour of the world to rally support. He was one of the leading voices raised in opposition to the Qarase government's proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coolie Woman
''Coolie Woman'' (full title: ''Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture'') is a book written by Gaiutra Bahadur and co-published in 2013 by Hurst and Company of London in Europe and the University of Chicago Press in the US. Editions from Hachette in India in 2013 and Jacana in South Africa in 2014 followed. The book is a biography of Sujaria, the great-grandmother of the author and simultaneously an exploration of the indentured labor system, which was practiced in the Caribbean. Tracing Sujaria's 1903 journey as a Brahmin caste woman from Bihar, India's poorest state, to the sugarcane plantations of British Guiana, Bahadur wove both archival and published records, as well as folk and oral sources, to tell the broader story of "the exodus and settlement of Indian women to the Caribbean". She critically examined the Hindu caste system, Indian family structure, and the indenture system itself in an attempt to understand how each of these shaped her grandmother and how migration ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brij Lal (historian)
Brij Vilash Lal , OF (21 August 1952 – 25 December 2021) was an Indo-Fijian historian who wrote about the Pacific region and the Indian indenture system. A harsh critic of the Bainimarama government, which originated in the military coup of 2006 and retained power in the 2014 elections, he lived in exile in Australia. Early life Lal was born in 1952 in Tabia, Labasa on the northern island of Vanua Levu, Fiji to illiterate parents. His paternal grandfather was a North Indian indentured sugar cane farmer in Fiji, known as a 'girmitya', - the focus of Lal's early academic research. He completed an undergraduate degree in history at the University of the South Pacific. He went on to do an MA (1976) at the University of British Columbia and a PhD (1980) at the Australian National University. Academic career Lal was professor of Pacific and Asian History at the School of Culture, History and Language at Australian National University from 1990 until his retirement in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Hawai'i Press
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. The first universities in Europe were established by Catholic Church monks. The University of Bologna (), Italy, which was founded in 1088, is the first university in the sense of: *being a high degree-awarding institute. *using the word ''universitas'' (which was coined at its foundation). *having independence from the ecclesiastic schools and issuing secular as well as non-secular degrees (with teaching conducted by both clergy and non-clergy): grammar, rhetoric, logic, theology, canon law, notarial law.Hunt Janin: "The university in medieval life, 1179–1499", McFarland, 2008, , p. 55f.de Ridder-Symoens, H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Global Girmit Museum
The Global Girmit Institute (GGI) Museum is co-located with the GGI Library at its headquarters in Saweni, Lautoka, Fiji. ''Girmit'' is a corruption of the English word, “agreement” from the indenture agreement the British government made with Indian labourers that consisted of specifics such as the length of stay in Fiji. The labourers came to be known as ''Girmityas''. Background Under thGGI Organisation the Museum records ''Girmitiya'' history in Fiji from 1879 to 1916 when some 60,500 labourers came to Fiji. One of the outcomes of the first conference organised by the GGI in 2017 was the establishment of a ''girmit'' museum. History The museum has been in the current location in Lautoka since the opening in May 2018 with the introduction of a library. Collections The museum will hold a collection of Fiji Indian artefacts as well as recordings of oral history of peoples from different linguistic backgrounds and cultures. Objects relating to farming and the sugar in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fiji Hindi
Fiji Hindi (Devanagari: ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Indo-Fijians. It is an Eastern Hindi language, considered to be a dialect of Awadhi that has also been subject to considerable influence by Bhojpuri, other Bihari dialects, and Hindustani. It has also borrowed some words from the English and Fijian languages. Many words unique to Fiji Hindi have been created to cater for the new environment that Indo-Fijians now live in. First-generation Indians in Fiji, who used the language as a '' lingua franca'' in Fiji, referred to it as ''Fiji Baat'', "Fiji talk". It is closely related to Caribbean Hindustani and the Bhojpuri-Hindustani language spoken in Mauritius and South Africa. It is largely mutually intellegible with the languages of Awadhi, Bhojpuri, etc. of Bihar and the dialects of Hindi of eastern Uttar Pradesh, but differs in phonetics and vocabulary with Modern Standard Hindi. History These are the percentages of each language and dialect spoken by indentu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indo-Caribbeans
Indo-Caribbeans or Indian-Caribbeans are Indian people in the Caribbean who are descendants of the Jahaji Indian indentured laborers brought by the British, Dutch, and French during the colonial era from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. A minority are descendants of Indians or other South Asians who immigrated as entrepreneurs, businesspeople, merchants, engineers, doctors, and other professional occupations beginning in the mid-20th century. Most Indo-Caribbean people live in the English-speaking Caribbean nations, the Dutch-speaking Suriname and the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana, with smaller numbers in other Caribbean countries and, following further migration, in North America and Europe. Indo-Caribbeans may also be referred to as Caribbean Indians, East Indian West Indians, or Caribbean Desis, while first-generation Indo-Caribbeans were called Girmitya, Desi, Kantraki, Mulki (m.) / Mulkin (f.), or Jahaji (m. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shaneel Lal
Shaneel Shavneel Lal (born 22 January 2000) is a Fijian-New Zealand LGBT rights activist, known for spearheading the movement to ban conversion therapy in New Zealand. Lal is a model, a columnist for ''New Zealand Herald'', and a political commentator. Lal is a trustee of Adhikaar Aotearoa, a non-profit that provides education, support and advocacy for queer South Asians. Lal has served as an executive board member of RainbowYOUTH and Auckland Pride Festival. Lal is the founder of the Conversion Therapy Action Group (CTAG), a group working to end conversion therapy in New Zealand, educate New Zealanders on the dangers of conversion therapy and advocate for support for survivors of conversion therapy. Biography Lal is non-binary, vakasalewalewa and hijra, and uses they/them pronouns. Lal was born in Nausori, Fiji to a mixed iTaukei and Girmitiya family on 22 January 2000. Lal comes from a Hindu family and was raised in a Hindu and Muslim community. After attending a Christi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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